With The Oatmeal’s help, nonprofit buys property to build a Tesla Museum

The 16-acre wooded property was once home to the scientist’s laboratory.

On Friday, a group known as the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, formerly known as Friends of Science East, purchased 16 acres on eastern Long Island to create a Tesla museum and science center. Matt Inman, creator of the Web cartoon The Oatmeal, encouraged his readers to contribute to the non-profit’s purchase, calling its goal "a simple feat… only expensive." Inman set out to raise $850,000, but ended up raising close to $1.4 million for the establishment of what will be America’s first museum dedicated to scientist Nikola Tesla.

The New York Timesreports that Inman’s fundraiser saw donations from residents of over 100 different countries. Inman donated the proceeds of the fundraiser to the nonprofit, which purchased the Long Island property from the Agfa Corporation. The corporation used the land from 1969 to 1992, but decided to put it up for sale in 2009.

Ars noted at the beginning of Inman’s fundraiser in August that Wardenclyffe, as Tesla called his estate, was originally intended to be “a vector for trans-Atlantic wireless communications, broadcasting, and wireless power. The site consisted of an (incomplete) 18-story-high transmission tower that topped off a laboratory surrounded by 16 acres of land in Shoreham, Long Island in 1903. By 1917, Tesla had sold the site for $20,000 to pay bills at the Waldorf. That same year, the transmission tower was blown up by the buyers and sold for scrap.”

Now that papers have been signed for the purchase of Wardenclyffe, the ruins of Tesla’s brilliant scientific career will be dusted off and presented to people who have admired the scientist’s work for decades.

I must say that I'm EXTREMELY disappointed that no large corporations such as Google, etc. donated to the cause. With their huge cash flow, it'd be nothing to donate a few hundred thousand to something like this and would've been immensely helpful.

I must say that I'm EXTREMELY disappointed that no large corporations such as Google, etc. donated to the cause. With their huge cash flow, it'd be nothing to donate a few hundred thousand to something like this and would've been immensely helpful.

I was a little worried that with the great success of the fundraising, the current landowners would try to gouge on the price or the matching grant would be reduced. Hopefully that didn't happen and that half-$M extra we all contributed can get to work cleaning up the property and maybe even starting the actual museum. Thanks to ars for bringing the project to our attention. Hope it opens before I wear out my T-shirt :-)

Google's Larry Page is apparently a big fan of Nikolai Tesla, but other than The Oatmeal calling him out, I can't find any article saying he pledged a donation on this. Does anyone know if he got involved eventually?

Sweet! Now maybe people will finally find out what a genius Tesla was. I know I was surprised to find out all the things he did that I had no idea he was responsible for.

A genius with numerous important contributions to be sure, but it's also worth bringing up how he was slightly off his rocker (especially in later years) and not everything he patented or claimed to have achieved is possible. He deservedly gets a lot of geek love, but also tends to be idolized for things that aren't true either. Hopefully a Tesla museum would serve as a good antidote to some of the hype without diminishing his genuine contributions.

Well, its about time. Now if only we could get the DoD to release his patents for wireless electrical transmission that JP Morgan put a stop to before driving him into alcoholism(supposedly) and labeling him a crackpot.

Sweet! Now maybe people will finally find out what a genius Tesla was. I know I was surprised to find out all the things he did that I had no idea he was responsible for.

A genius with numerous important contributions to be sure, but it's also worth bringing up how he was slightly off his rocker (especially in later years) and not everything he patented or claimed to have achieved is possible. He deservedly gets a lot of geek love, but also tends to be idolized for things that aren't true either. Hopefully a Tesla museum would serve as a good antidote to some of the hype without diminishing his genuine contributions.

Please, what things did he claim that were not possible? From what I understand he demonstrated every single thing he tried to do, got massive amounts of funding for it, then had JP Morgan pull the funding and drive him into alcoholism by destroying his lab, twice, and ruining much of his lifes work. The reason no one knows about him, is because good ol JP made sure to make people think he was a crackpot while at the same time praising Edison as the founder of electricity(light bulb) even though it was Tesla who made everything electrical that we have today, possible. Please, I really do want some details?

Sweet! Now maybe people will finally find out what a genius Tesla was. I know I was surprised to find out all the things he did that I had no idea he was responsible for.

A genius with numerous important contributions to be sure, but it's also worth bringing up how he was slightly off his rocker (especially in later years) and not everything he patented or claimed to have achieved is possible. He deservedly gets a lot of geek love, but also tends to be idolized for things that aren't true either. Hopefully a Tesla museum would serve as a good antidote to some of the hype without diminishing his genuine contributions.

Please, what things did he claim that were not possible? From what I understand he demonstrated every single thing he tried to do, got massive amounts of funding for it, then had JP Morgan pull the funding and drive him into alcoholism by destroying his lab, twice, and ruining much of his lifes work. The reason no one knows about him, is because good ol JP made sure to make people think he was a crackpot while at the same time praising Edison as the founder of electricity(light bulb) even though it was Tesla who made everything electrical that we have today, possible. Please, I really do want some details?

What needs to be recognized is that he had the ability to SEE things differently. He reminds me of Arthur M Young in many regards.

Well, its about time. Now if only we could get the DoD to release his patents for wireless electrical transmission that JP Morgan put a stop to before driving him into alcoholism(supposedly) and labeling him a crackpot.

Even if you are right that the DoD had rights to his patents, those patents expired many decades to more than a century ago. He received his last patent in 1928. Unlike copyright, patents still expire.

The problem with wireless electrical transmission is that it is grossly inefficient at any distance. JP Morgan didn't have to do anything to stop him on that. Wireless electrical transmission is a cute trick for charging some cell phones and other devices such as electric toothbrushes, though.

Sweet! Now maybe people will finally find out what a genius Tesla was. I know I was surprised to find out all the things he did that I had no idea he was responsible for.

A genius with numerous important contributions to be sure, but it's also worth bringing up how he was slightly off his rocker (especially in later years) and not everything he patented or claimed to have achieved is possible. He deservedly gets a lot of geek love, but also tends to be idolized for things that aren't true either. Hopefully a Tesla museum would serve as a good antidote to some of the hype without diminishing his genuine contributions.

Please, what things did he claim that were not possible? From what I understand he demonstrated every single thing he tried to do, got massive amounts of funding for it, then had JP Morgan pull the funding and drive him into alcoholism by destroying his lab, twice, and ruining much of his lifes work. The reason no one knows about him, is because good ol JP made sure to make people think he was a crackpot while at the same time praising Edison as the founder of electricity(light bulb) even though it was Tesla who made everything electrical that we have today, possible. Please, I really do want some details?

Well, its about time. Now if only we could get the DoD to release his patents for wireless electrical transmission that JP Morgan put a stop to before driving him into alcoholism(supposedly) and labeling him a crackpot.

Wireless electrical transmission has moved beyond Tesla's capabilities. And it is still impractical for wide-scale power distribution. The problem of EMF following the inverse square law from a point source (under ideal circumstances) makes it difficult to do anything at a decent range, even worse than Edison's direct-current electrical power.

Kin24 wrote:

Please, what things did he claim that were not possible? From what I understand he demonstrated every single thing he tried to do, got massive amounts of funding for it, then had JP Morgan pull the funding and drive him into alcoholism by destroying his lab, twice, and ruining much of his lifes work. The reason no one knows about him, is because good ol JP made sure to make people think he was a crackpot while at the same time praising Edison as the founder of electricity(light bulb) even though it was Tesla who made everything electrical that we have today, possible. Please, I really do want some details?

Death ray, for one. It was never demonstrated and no working model was ever produced. There are many things Tesla never publicly demonstrated, patented, or set down to paper (and much of what was is lost), despite his claims of achieving them. Some of them are improbable. And Tesla's reputation as more than just a little eccentric is not all due to conspiracies by former business partners; the guy had nutty claims about nutrition, physics (rejecting Relativity and the existence of sub-atomic particles), and natural phenomena like cosmic rays (which he apparently thought he'd demonstrated to be virtually neutral particles traveling faster than light, which we know is false). Like I said, Tesla was brilliant and he did leave us a huge technological legacy. But not only was he not right about everything, and some of the things he claimed to have discovered, invented, or demonstrated are wrong, even if fantastical. Mixed in with his real contributions are a lot of hokum.

Sweet! Now maybe people will finally find out what a genius Tesla was. I know I was surprised to find out all the things he did that I had no idea he was responsible for.

A genius with numerous important contributions to be sure, but it's also worth bringing up how he was slightly off his rocker (especially in later years) and not everything he patented or claimed to have achieved is possible. He deservedly gets a lot of geek love, but also tends to be idolized for things that aren't true either. Hopefully a Tesla museum would serve as a good antidote to some of the hype without diminishing his genuine contributions.

Please, what things did he claim that were not possible? From what I understand he demonstrated every single thing he tried to do, got massive amounts of funding for it, then had JP Morgan pull the funding and drive him into alcoholism by destroying his lab, twice, and ruining much of his lifes work. The reason no one knows about him, is because good ol JP made sure to make people think he was a crackpot while at the same time praising Edison as the founder of electricity(light bulb) even though it was Tesla who made everything electrical that we have today, possible. Please, I really do want some details?

His supposed earthquake machine.

Teleportation, long distance wireless energy, death rays, and I am sure I am forgotting things. Part of what makes Tesla so awesome for nerds, is to imagine the consequence of What If.. some of his really nutty delusions were really true.

Please, what things did he claim that were not possible? From what I understand he demonstrated every single thing he tried to do, got massive amounts of funding for it, then had JP Morgan pull the funding and drive him into alcoholism by destroying his lab, twice, and ruining much of his lifes work. The reason no one knows about him, is because good ol JP made sure to make people think he was a crackpot while at the same time praising Edison as the founder of electricity(light bulb) even though it was Tesla who made everything electrical that we have today, possible. Please, I really do want some details?

I agree most things he got right, but Wardenclyffe itself was a huge failure. It was suppose to be for telecommunications, he wanted it to be a high voltage transmission tower. In the end Wardenclyffe is just a tower. After that debacle no one would fund any of his work. But from a modern perspective I guess the only part he got wrong was the "high voltage" part, since wireless charging is a possibility.

Wireless power at high voltage is already possibly using techniques such as resonance. This technology will get far more efficient as innovation continues. This in turn makes Testa's claims of having devised ways of transferring power long distances through the earth more plausible while his wireless power transmission via air has already been confirmed.

The guy was so far ahead of his time that it appears people are still calling him a crackpot today, so many years after his death. I wonder when we will finally get to the same level of enlightenment that he was able to reach.

I am pleased to see that he is getting recognition. The power hungry were already at work back then discrediting anyone who wouldn't play by their rules. Its good to see that at least one inventor's legacy was able to survive.

I really hope they have a huge Tesla coil built on site for everyone to see.

Sweet! Now maybe people will finally find out what a genius Tesla was. I know I was surprised to find out all the things he did that I had no idea he was responsible for.

A genius with numerous important contributions to be sure, but it's also worth bringing up how he was slightly off his rocker (especially in later years) and not everything he patented or claimed to have achieved is possible. He deservedly gets a lot of geek love, but also tends to be idolized for things that aren't true either. Hopefully a Tesla museum would serve as a good antidote to some of the hype without diminishing his genuine contributions.

Please, what things did he claim that were not possible? From what I understand he demonstrated every single thing he tried to do, got massive amounts of funding for it, then had JP Morgan pull the funding and drive him into alcoholism by destroying his lab, twice, and ruining much of his lifes work. The reason no one knows about him, is because good ol JP made sure to make people think he was a crackpot while at the same time praising Edison as the founder of electricity(light bulb) even though it was Tesla who made everything electrical that we have today, possible. Please, I really do want some details?

His supposed earthquake machine.

Teleportation, long distance wireless energy, death rays, and I am sure I am forgotting things. Part of what makes Tesla so awesome for nerds, is to imagine the consequence of What If.. some of his really nutty delusions were really true.

Seriously. He was right about so much, one has to wonder what we've missed since then. Plus, we need more people that tapdance that line between brilliance and insanity.

I love spending other people's money! It's such a cheap way to score moral superiority points!

It's funny (junk) that you should mention that, TC -- excuse me, TNT. Charles Carreon, FunnyJunk's lawyer, was officially disciplined by a state bar association for spending a client's money without the client's knowledge or consent. But I'm sure that you didn't intend in your post to imply that Chucky Dead-Meat is a disgusting, vile person, even for a censorious-douchebag lawyer.

Well, Tesla wasn't a crackpot... He actually believed all his outlandish ideas would work. Problem was, as with certain other geniuses, his ability to see beyond came at the expense of his ability to see cold, hard reality. He was a wee bit short of marbles, but he still deserves a lot more praise than he got during his lifetime.

If people can praise Edison with all his faults(and many they definitely were), we can set aside his crazy unsuccessful endeavors as a historical sidenote and go visit the godd*mn museum whenever they finish making it.

Well, Tesla wasn't a crackpot... He actually believed all his outlandish ideas would work.

I've never seen a definition of crackpot where they didn't.

And yeah, I haven't seen anybody here saying Tesla wasn't pretty rad, or didn't make a bunch or really major contributions. Just that some of his claims have never been proven, or have been wrong or impossible. But plenty of other well respected scientific figures have made wrong claims before too. Tesla's awesomeness (particularly among nerds) is somewhat overstated. Somewhat.

Sweet! Now maybe people will finally find out what a genius Tesla was. I know I was surprised to find out all the things he did that I had no idea he was responsible for.

A genius with numerous important contributions to be sure, but it's also worth bringing up how he was slightly off his rocker (especially in later years) and not everything he patented or claimed to have achieved is possible. He deservedly gets a lot of geek love, but also tends to be idolized for things that aren't true either. Hopefully a Tesla museum would serve as a good antidote to some of the hype without diminishing his genuine contributions.

Please, what things did he claim that were not possible? From what I understand he demonstrated every single thing he tried to do, got massive amounts of funding for it, then had JP Morgan pull the funding and drive him into alcoholism by destroying his lab, twice, and ruining much of his lifes work. The reason no one knows about him, is because good ol JP made sure to make people think he was a crackpot while at the same time praising Edison as the founder of electricity(light bulb) even though it was Tesla who made everything electrical that we have today, possible. Please, I really do want some details?

His supposed earthquake machine.

Teleportation, long distance wireless energy, death rays, and I am sure I am forgotting things. Part of what makes Tesla so awesome for nerds, is to imagine the consequence of What If.. some of his really nutty delusions were really true.

Folks, I think we just figured out the problem of ongoing funding for maintenance and expansion...

Tesla Land aka SteamPunk Clockwork Amusements! Yes, for the wildly fantastic claims of death rays, earthquake machines, etc., it can be real with F/X and roller coasters. And the Museum is on hand to show what really works. win Win! They can host steampunk conventions.

Heck, if they can do Dolly Parton Land aka Dollywood or the Magic Kingdom, why not?

People will eat up the crass commercialism and hopefully the message of science emblazoned on the side of their soft drinks and food wrappers will penetrate the ennui.

Tesla Land aka SteamPunk Clockwork Amusements! Yes, for the wildly fantastic claims of death rays, earthquake machines, etc., it can be real with F/X and roller coasters. And the Museum is on hand to show what really works. win Win! They can host steampunk conventions.

Possible, in theory. There have been a number of advances in quantum teleportation covered by this very site.

Quantum teleportation isn't the teleportation Tesla speculated about and is only teleportation on a technicality, as the original still exists, so there is one entity before "teleportation" and two entities in existence afterward. It's essentially a replica, except it gets called teleportation because the original has changed by the time the replica forms.

Sweet! Now maybe people will finally find out what a genius Tesla was. I know I was surprised to find out all the things he did that I had no idea he was responsible for.

A genius with numerous important contributions to be sure, but it's also worth bringing up how he was slightly off his rocker (especially in later years) and not everything he patented or claimed to have achieved is possible. He deservedly gets a lot of geek love, but also tends to be idolized for things that aren't true either. Hopefully a Tesla museum would serve as a good antidote to some of the hype without diminishing his genuine contributions.

Please, what things did he claim that were not possible? From what I understand he demonstrated every single thing he tried to do, got massive amounts of funding for it, then had JP Morgan pull the funding and drive him into alcoholism by destroying his lab, twice, and ruining much of his lifes work. The reason no one knows about him, is because good ol JP made sure to make people think he was a crackpot while at the same time praising Edison as the founder of electricity(light bulb) even though it was Tesla who made everything electrical that we have today, possible. Please, I really do want some details?

His supposed earthquake machine.

Teleportation, long distance wireless energy, death rays, and I am sure I am forgotting things. Part of what makes Tesla so awesome for nerds, is to imagine the consequence of What If.. some of his really nutty delusions were really true.

Folks, I think we just figured out the problem of ongoing funding for maintenance and expansion...

Tesla Land aka SteamPunk Clockwork Amusements! Yes, for the wildly fantastic claims of death rays, earthquake machines, etc., it can be real with F/X and roller coasters. And the Museum is on hand to show what really works. win Win! They can host steampunk conventions.

Heck, if they can do Dolly Parton Land aka Dollywood or the Magic Kingdom, why not?

People will eat up the crass commercialism and hopefully the message of science emblazoned on the side of their soft drinks and food wrappers will penetrate the ennui.

As previously stated, there is a fine line between insanity and genius. The problem is that many people can't even see the fence that the man is walking on, and those that can, can't agree upon what the fence is made out of...I can only imagine what he could've bought into reality today with advances in materials sciences, etc.

Modern laser development has pretty much nothing to do with Tesla's claims and mechanism of a death ray, which was apparently closer (but not identical) to a rail gun in principle and fired solid matter within a directed electric field. Lasers require sufficient knowledge of quantum mechanics, something Telsa had no grasp of (and probably would have disdained, seeing as how he rejected the existence of sub-atomic particles).

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The guy was so far ahead of his time that it appears people are still calling him a crackpot today, so many years after his death. I wonder when we will finally get to the same level of enlightenment that he was able to reach.

There's "so far ahead of his time" and then there's "he was wrong about a lot of things." He was wrong about a lot of things. A lot of it came down to his lack of familiarity with contemporary science and physics and his unwillingness to embrace the advances being made around him. He was also a fairly kooky person. Newton was too, though, so it's not like I'm trying to downplay his real achievements. I'm just saying that not all his claimed achievements are credible and some of them are wrong. This is the kind of mythologized view of Tesla I'm hoping will be dispelled, because it actually detracts from his real accomplishments.

Well, its about time. Now if only we could get the DoD to release his patents for wireless electrical transmission that JP Morgan put a stop to before driving him into alcoholism(supposedly) and labeling him a crackpot.

Even if you are right that the DoD had rights to his patents, those patents expired many decades to more than a century ago. He received his last patent in 1928. Unlike copyright, patents still expire.

Meh. Given enough time and lobbying money, patents will be eternal too. Or, at least, eternal for those who can afford to lobby to get their own patents extended every 25 years or so, like some copyrights are.

Sorry for the off-topic diversion. Kudos to Inman and all the other folks involved!

Wireless power at high voltage is already possibly using techniques such as resonance. This technology will get far more efficient as innovation continues. This in turn makes Testa's claims of having devised ways of transferring power long distances through the earth more plausible while his wireless power transmission via air has already been confirmed.

The guy was so far ahead of his time that it appears people are still calling him a crackpot today, so many years after his death. I wonder when we will finally get to the same level of enlightenment that he was able to reach.

I don't know why posts like this get upvoted. This is a perfect example of unscientific thinking, and of an argument from authority. You're not properly placing the burden of proof. Tesla made a lot of unproven claims. The claims he made that are proven, and resulted in neat inventions are great. There's no need to pretend that his more crackpot and unsubstantiated claims are true, he is impressive enough on the things that are actually verifiable.

The 100 years ahead of everybody else claim smacks of hero worship, and credulous thinking. Tesla got as much wrong as he did right - something that is true of most great engineers and scientists.

Tesla was an awesome guy. If nothing else his invention of alternating current revolutionized the world, making transmission of power across long distances cheap and efficient. He more-or-less invented the radio, he was pretty awesome. No need to appeal to unproven wild claims about death rays or earthquake generators.